The Dryden will screen A Fool There Was (Frank Powell, U.S. 1915, 78 min., 35mm). The film will be "accompanied live by a new score for chamber ensemble by Philip C. Carli."

Theda Bara is probably the most famous American silent film star whose reputation is based on films that are irretrievably lost. Of the forty films she made between 1914 and 1919, only three survive, and of those only one displays her as her celebrated persona of a vamp—a woman who preys upon men and exploits their emotional and sexual frailties. That film is A Fool There Was, based on Porter Emerson Browne's 1909 hit play. It is Bara's first starring role, and the film's enormous success both built her fortune and secured the future for pioneer producer William Fox and the Fox Film Corporation.

[source: George Eastman Museum, 2017-Nov-6]